Written by Roland
Emmerich, Dean Devlin, Nicolas Wright, James A. Woods and James Vanderbilt,
based on characters created by Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin.

Directed by Roland
Emmerich.

GRADE: D

REVIEW:

It’s bad enough that most Hollywood blockbusters are
repurposed, reworked, rebooted and regurgitated. “Sequelitis” is a potent and
viral disease driven by studio greed and fear of risk. Most studios, void of
fresh ideas, rely on known franchises and characters to keep the money flowing
in. Sometimes (though rarely), film executives make a hit movie and move on,
passing on a sequel. When Independence
Day came and left theaters in 1996, it seemed that the world had been
sufficiently saved from a fictional alien invasion, and that was that. But,
like a patient awakening from a 20-year coma, the folks at 20th
Century Fox suddenly realized they forgot to make a sequel, and quickly
rectified this outrage with this weekend’s release of Independence Day: Resurgence.

The story picks up 20 years after the “War of 1996,” now
heralded as the major global event that shaped the world’s political and
economic futures. The people of Earth have also repurposed alien technology to
advance their culture, using their unwelcome visitors’ anti gravity and
weaponry to boost defenses. It’s also apparent that the entire planet has
coalesced into global community, bypassing things like culture, religion and
economics to form one big, happy worldwide family. David Levinson (Jeff
Goldblum) is now the “Director” of the Earth Space Defense (having moved up
quite a bit since his gig as a satellite engineer for a cable TV network), and
he’s on a mission to find the source of a strange beacon suddenly emitting from
one of the old ships that was destroyed during the 1996 struggle. In the
meantime, lots of people are haunted by images of a mysterious orb, including
former U.S. president Thomas Whitmore (Bill Pullman), who is nearly driven mad.
The young members of the ESD are Lt. Jake Morrison (Liam Hemsworth), Dylan
Dubrow-Hiller (Jessie Usher) and others who are the second generation of 1996
survivors. Dylan is the stepson of Steven Hiller, played by Will Smith in the
first film – whose character is killed off by some sort of test flight crash (or
perhaps Will Smith had no interest in the sequel, perhaps for good reason).
Another second-generation survivor is Patricia Whitmore (Maika Monroe), the
former president’s daughter and now a member of the current President Lansford
(Sela Ward)’s staff (she’s also engaged to Jake). Another survivor is Dr.
Brakish Okun (Brent Spiner) who’s been in a coma since aliens attacked him in
the first film. When the beacon goes off, he awakens and takes up his duties as
resident eccentric scientist.

From here, the story goes pretty much the same as the first
film. People of Earth use all their inferior technology to try and thwart
another alien invasion, only bigger. A big battle ensues over Utah’s west
desert, where someone has to make the ultimate sacrifice to save humanity.
There a lot of silly details in the middle, but suffice to say they are of
little significance, other than the chilling reality that this movie is an
obvious setup for more sequels (let’s hope it takes 20 years to get that
going).

Independence Day: Resurgence
is an awful movie. Sometime around the first 20 minutes of the movie, you can
tell that the team of writers (including director Roland Emmerich) kind of gave
up and simply reverted to the 1996 script. This time, the characters are flat, less
appealing and have nothing clever to say. It seems that the writers may have
recognized the silliness. For example, as the bigger, new and improved aliens
attack the Earth again, Jeff Goldblum’s character, referring to the destruction
of iconic areas says, “They always go after the landmarks.” Yep. Thanks for
pointing out the obvious. At another even more inane moment, President Whitmore
begins to have a conversation about the looming alien threat with a few folks
standing nearby. As the music swells, more folks drop whatever war preparations
their supposed to be doing and gather to hear another version of “Our
Independence Day” speech, followed by a chorus of patriotic cheers.

What is more than obvious is what a terrible and
half-hearted effort Independence Day:
Resurgence turned out to be. Yes, there are some dazzling special effects,
but nothing else that makes you root for the people of Earth.